How Brittney Griner Healed After Her Wrongful Detainment: She and Wife Cherelle ‘Embraced the Slow’ (Exclusive)

Brittney and Cherelle Griner are learning to embrace the quiet moments in between.

While on the red carpet of the premiere of The Brittney Griner Story at Sundance Film Festival, the WNBA star and her wife of six years tell PEOPLE that their home became a haven after the athlete returned to the U.S. following her 2022 detainment in Russia.

“Honestly, I think for me personally, like self care, it really looked like being able to just turn it off,” Cherelle, 33, tells PEOPLE. “I had to be on for so long in a way that was not naturally my habitat because BG’s normally the one in front of cameras, not me.”

Yet the 35-year-old  basketball star also found that taking a beat behind the scenes was healing, Cherelle says.

“I needed nothing more than to actually just be in my four walls with my family and enjoy peace with no outside noise,” she says, “And I think in retrospect, we both needed it because BG kind of was like, ‘This actually feels good just being here together.’ ”

Cherelle adds, “And so we didn’t plan anything outward. We really just kind of embraced the slow, steady of our four walls in our house and our own voices and not hearing anything else.”

These days, the “slow” is a bit more dialed-up, thanks to the arrival of their son Bash, now 18 months old.

“Oh my God, it is a lot,” Brittney tells PEOPLE. “I see why everybody says goodbye to sleep, especially in the early days, but it’s so rewarding. I come home, he’s smiling. My day’s just good then.”

The Atlanta Dream star has previously shared that it is hard to be away from her son during the season, but that she welcomes the fact that the toddler now takes center stage in her life.

“He’s my why,” Brittney told reporters last June at a post-game presser where Bash adorably made an appearance. “It was starting to get to a point where I was like, what is my why? Honestly, and then he came along and yeah, he’s my why.”

She continued, “Like everything I do is for him. I’ll be proud of him once he’s able to really realize everything. … I do it for him, want to provide for him and show him the right way to do things.”